A company in Newfoundland hopes that access to feed specially formulated for sea urchins will change its luck.

Green Seafoods did grow-out trials in 2000 but the biggest problem was securing the right feed to increase the roe (gonads) to a marketable size. Operations manager Mark Sheppard says the sea urchins they were raising ended up tasting like what they had just eaten, for instance, kelp or fish protein.

With access to feed developed by Norway-based Urchinomics and Nofima, he hopes this second round of sea urchin grow-out trials will yield better results. The feed is special in that it holds its form in water for between seven to 14 days without dissolving, a quality important for urchins because they take a long time to eat.

“We know that it works in the lab. We are going to do some full-blown commercial trials this fall,” he says.

Feeding farmed fish with live feeds that are nutritionally enhanced with nutrient-dense liposomes could become a reality sooner than later. Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) have been studying ways to deliver water-soluble nutrients to aquatic organisms. The problem is that water-soluble nutrients can be rapidly lost from artificial feeds when they are added to the water, resulting in nutrient losses and poor water quality.

Liposomes are microscopic particles that are constructed very similar to cell membranes. They are small enough to feed to rotifers and Artemia that are used as live feeds in marine finfish hatcheries. Importantly, liposomes very effectively retain water-soluble compounds when suspended in water. OSU researchers are exploring the use of soy-based liposomes for delivering essential nutrients to larval fish and other aquatic organisms.

During his PhD studies, Dr Matt Hawkyard collaborated with researchers from Norway to develop larger scale batches of liposomes to match the scale of aquaculture production. Through feeding nutrient-dense liposomes to Artemia and rotifers, Hawkyard hopes that they can make a drastic impact on mortality rates and improve larval quality in the industry.

“We can actually boost the level of, say, taurine, that we know is an essential compound, very much like amino acid, and we can boost those concentrations in rotifers to levels that are beneficial to fish,” says Hawkyard. “These [particles] are extremely efficient and deliver a pretty high payload.”

Hawkyard says that after feeding liposome-fed rotifers to Northern Rock Sole larvae they found a tremendous impact on growth after a six-week feeding trial, compared to control groups. Since establishing the potential of the liposomes for such work with taurine, researchers have successfully utilized liposomes to deliver vitamin C, iodine, selenium and other nutrients.

One of the key benefits of the liposomes is the prevention of nutrient leaching. One could achieve similar growth results through taurine by simply dissolving a great deal of taurine into rotifer water, says Hawkyard, however that would take 60 to 100 times more taurine because much of the nutrient doesn’t make it to the rotifer. Plus, the wasted nutrients provide a “broth” for bacteria.

By improving the quality of live feeds, Hawkyard hopes that they are not only able to reduce mortality rates, but also malformation rates.

“Even as we decrease mortality rates and increase survival, you see a pretty high rate of malformations in a lot of marine fish juveniles,” says Hawkyard. “Jaw deformities are really common in a number of species, and fin development and scoliosis – a wide variety of these kinds of physical malformations show up in the later phases. But they look like they’re related to things that are happening in the larval stage and, probably, a large number of that, or at least a fraction of those malformations are due to nutritional deficiencies or imbalances.”

Going forward, Hawkyard says OSU are working on a few other particle types, including a complex particle where they are trying to integrate liposomes into a larger particle to feed directly to fish.

ADM Animal Nutrition launched at Aquaculture America a new protein source for aquaculture, called PROPLEX T.

Composed of dried fermentation biomass, PROPLEX T provides a consistent source of digestible protein and high levels of essential amino acids for fish and shrimp.

The company says PROPLEX T has proven to be a successful replacement for other protein sources, such as fishmeal, in diets for fish and shrimp.

“PROPLEX T is a cost-effective protein source that can be used in place of expensive or variable protein products,” said Dr John Bowzer, aquaculture research scientist for ADM. “Additionally, PROPLEX T provides feed manufacturers with added flexibility in formulations due to its high protein content and favorable amino acid profile.”

Canola oil could someday become a common ingredient for salmon feed. At the moment, raising fish rich in Omega-3s means supplementing their feed with fish oil.

Researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (Nofima) said preliminary results of their study show Omega-3 oil derived from canola is safe to use as ingredient in salmon feed.

Canola is a vegetable oil derived from rapeseed, which is rich in the marine fatty acid DHA.

Results of the Nofima study show salmon given feed containing Omega-3 Canola had the same Omega-3 levels as salmon fed with fish oil. Gene expression analyses showed that effects depended on the amount of oil, not the type of oil, the study says.

Feed producer Cargill is developing a new type of canola oil for use in fish feed.

FeedKind protein, a new fish-feed ingredient touted to reduce aquaculture’s use of fishmeal, is expected to reach the market in 2019 once commercial production begins at Calysta Inc’s Tennessee facility.

As aquaculture continues to produce an increasingly larger portion of seafood consumed in the world, it also becomes a larger and more lucrative market. In recent years that market has attracted the attention of a variety of big grain trading companies that have sought to diversify their products. Companies such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge Ltd and Terra Via shared with Aquaculture North America (ANA) why they wanted to become a part of the aquaculture market.